This is the prime season to be planting your cool season vegetables. Old timers say to plant your seed potatoes by Saint Patrick’s Day, a good way to remember the planting “deadline” for Irish Potatoes. You should also be wrapping up your planting of onion sets and onion plants, bareroot strawberries, asparagus, rhubarb and most other bareroot berry crops in the next couple of weeks. You can also plant vegetable seeds for beets, carrots, swiss chard, kohlrabi, lettuce, peas, radish, spinach and turnips.

More folks are adding vegetables to their yard and learning the joy and satisfaction of raising some of their own foods. Even if you live in an apartment or condo you can grow most vegetables in container gardens on your patio. 

If you carried over some seed and want to see if they are viable before planting drop a few in a cup of water. Generally “dead” or bad seeds will float and “live” seeds will sink. Another test is placing some seeds between 2 moist paper towels on a cookie sheet in a warm room. Remoisten towels daily. If most seeds start to germinate within  days you can start the rest in seed trays indoors or directly in the garden.

March is pruning season and the time to remove dead or damaged wood and to shape your trees and most shrubs. Do not prune early spring flowering shrubs like forsythia and quince as you will cut off flowers that are already formed and getting ready to dazzle you.  Wait to prune roses until mid March so you don’t stimulate new growth too early that could be damaged by late spring freezes.

Prune your trees, shrubs and roses to open up the plant by pruning to a bud or shoot pointing away from the center of the plant. The first bud below the cut will almost always be the bud to develop into a new shoot or branch. If you are pruning a grafted fruit tree, rose or other shrub always prune off all shoots from below the graft. Prune trees to avoid splits and “Y”s and to protect a central leader unless training a fruit tree for an exotic trellis system. Make clean cuts at a slight angle downward and away from your selected bud.

This is also the season to apply pre-emergence weed killers to kill crabgrass and other summer weeds before they germinate. Think of liquid or granular pre-emergent herbicides as “birth control” for weeds. They are best when applied when the yellow Forsythia shrubs start to bloom but before the weed seeds germinate. Pre-emergents will kill from 75% to 95% of most weeds before they ever sprout to compete with your lawn.

Most folks use a weed and feed product that will apply the pre-emergent weed killer along with the first round of lawn fertilizer for the season. You can also buy most all of the pre-emergent weed killers in liquid formulations, without fertilizer, to spray on your lawn just as many of the lawn treatment services would do if you hired out this service.

Look for these active ingredients in your pre-emergent in most of the major brands: Balan, Treflan, Team, Gallery, Sulfentrazone or my personal favorites Prodiamine (Barricade) and Dimension. It is much easier to control crabgrass, foxtail and other lawn weeds with pre-emergent herbicides before they germinate than it is to control them after they are grown and competing with your lawn this summer. You can use 60% corn gluten meal as an organic pre-emergent weed control.

Now is the time to apply dormant oil sprays to your fruit trees to control many insects and diseases. Apply lime sulfur, Bordeaux or a fungicide with cholorthalonil to control peach leaf curl on your peach trees. Make sure the temperature is above 40°, make sure to get thorough coverage of all limbs, branches and twigs and confirm that the spray has a chance to dry before rains or freezing.

Two weeks ago we visited about planting onion sets and plants, seed potatoes, bareroot strawberries, rhubarb, asparagus and other cool season vegetables and berries. It is a good thing we can plant all those crops up to Saint Patrick’s Day in mid-March as the soil has been frozen or covered with ice and snow most of the time and we haven’t had many opportunities to start planting. Watch for the nice sunny, slightly warmer days and start planting these crops.

It is time to clean out those flowerbeds, take soil tests, prepare the soil and get ready to plant for a new season. It is time to start buying and planting the first vegetables and berries of spring. The weather warms across our state from south to north so the folks near the Red River can usually plant 7 to 14 days before the folks near the Kansas border. Remember we will frost and freeze many more times with our last average freeze usually around April 7^th or in a little over 2 months from now. Many cool season crops can be planted now and will tolerate our normal February and March weather.

Fresh asparagus is one of our most expensive vegetables and is a hardy perennial you can grow. Plant 3 to 5 crowns per person to harvest about 1 pound of edible stems or spears from each plant starting in year 2 for up to 15 years. Rhubarb is another hardy perennial grown from crowns. Plant 3 to 4 crowns per person if you like rhubarb. Spring bearing and everbearing varieties of bareroot strawberries are available at most nurseries and garden centers if you want to raise your own fresh strawberries for cobblers, pie, shortcake or just fresh, healthy snacks.

Onion sets and onion plants are available now to raise your own yellow, red or white onions. A good guideline is to plant ¼ quart of sets or 75 onion starter plants per person if you like fresh onions in your salads, on your hamburgers or sliced on the plate. Potatoes are one of the staple foods of many diets and now is the time to buy seed potatoes, cut them into 2 or 3 ounce slices with eyes or buds to plant in your garden.  There are many good varieties of white, red, yellow or gold Irish type potatoes so you can raise your own baked or mashed potatoes or cut your own French fries. Most folks plant about 6 to 8 pounds of seed potatoes per person.

The best time to sow seed for many cool season vegetables like carrots, swiss chard, kohlrabi, leaf lettuce, peas, spinach and turnips is from Valentines to Saint Patrick’s Day. February 14 to March 17^th are also good dates to transplant cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and lettuce plants.

You can raise all these crops in ground beds, raised beds and many folks are even raising some vegetables in large nursery cans or decorative containers on their patio or porch. Root Control, an Oklahoma company is having big success marketing their fabric tree bags in mail order catalogs and at garden centers for production of potatoes and vegetables on apartment patios and porches.

Use your imagination about where to garden but consider getting in on the fun to produce some of your own fresh, locally grown produce.

Don’t get too anxious and start removing trees, shrubs or plants you suspect are damaged. Wait until spring to see what leafs out before taking action. They will be less likely to dehydrate and freeze if the soil is mulched and not real dry so water periodically throughout the winter to keep the soil slightly moist.

We are all spending more time inside with all this cold weather so this is a great time to really enjoy your houseplants. Add a few more plants to your collection to help clean up the inside air, produce oxygen and to provide some life, décor and excitement to your home. There are hundreds of nice plants that grow well indoors and the key issues for success usually are light, water and humidity.

Most house plants do better with more light but many like philodendron ivy, pothos ivy, spathiphyllum, dracaena, aglaonema and ficus will tolerate low light and although they will grow slow, stay attractive and interesting for long periods in lower light. The best light is good indirect light from an east window or set back slightly from south or west windows. Many plants will also perform well under 12 or more hours daily of good artificial light.

Many house plant “farmers” tend to overwater their plants. Most house plants are more tolerant of running dry than too wet.  A good rule of thumb is to keep the soil on the dry side, particularly during these colder and darker winter months.  Remember that the more light you’ve got ,the more water the plant will use for photosynthesis and the more often water will be needed.  House plants usually need water once a week or less.

Humidity is often the key to keeping your house plants really happy. In the winter we have very dry air and all but cactus or succulents will benefit from an occasional or even daily misting of the foliage with a light mist of water. You can make an inexpensive but effective plant humidifier by filling a saucer or tray with gravel or stones and pouring a little water to stand between the stones under your pots and evaporate around the plants.

Visit your local garden center or florist and try out a new houseplant or get one that brings back memories of your grandparents or travels.

Although it is not the best weather to be outside working in the yard or garden, this is still an important time on the gardening calendar. Besides shoveling snow and feeding the birds, this is the season to be planning your garden activities for 2010. Many of the garden seed and supply catalogs are scheduled to arrive in the mail right here at the turn of the year and help get us excited about the upcoming spring season. After the messy weather of the last couple of weeks I suspect many of us are really looking forward to spring 2010.

Just like some folks get excited about new cars or pickups, gardeners get excited about new varieties of tomatoes, peppers, marigolds and petunias. We have programs like the All American Selections and Oklahoma Proven to introduce new plant varieties and highlight great performers you may want to try in your yard. Many experienced growers keep journals or notes of what plants performed well and what plants did not do well in prior years. Other folks just kind of remember what they liked or didn’t like. This is the season for resolutions and planning so take a little time to think about or look at your notes, if you have them, to see what has worked well you want to repeat and what has not worked well where you want to try something new. Look through the seed catalogs or your gardening e-mails and pick out some new vegetables, bulbs, perennials, colorful annuals, fruit trees, berries or shade trees you want to add to your yard this season.

Vegetable gardening had dropped in popularity before last year when new interest in vegetable gardening and local food production skyrocketed with concerns about the economy and food safety. This resulted in many new gardeners we hope will return and expand their gardening experiences in 2010. Tomatoes are by far the most popular home gardening vegetable plant and last year was not a very good tomato year because of an unusually wet year alternating with surges of hot weather. We look for a better harvest this year.

Life almost always goes better with a plan, so this is the season to think about whether to create a new flowerbed, start a vegetable garden, add a water garden, add an outdoor living area, plant some new shade trees for the backyard or develop a new landscape for the front yard. Enjoy your houseplants inside but have fun as you start planning for the joys of spring outside in your garden and the real end of winter’s cabin fever.

If you still need to do some Christmas shopping for yourself or a gardening friend there are thousands of possibilities. You may want to consider actual plants, gift certificates from their favorite garden center for plants that may be out of season or if you aren’t sure what plants they want. Listen to what they like or think back to what they enjoy and consider gifts that match their interest in trees, perennials, vegetables, flower gardening or even hobby greenhouse or greenhouse supplies. Garden tools, gloves, pruning shears or loppers, water tools or drip irrigation systems are all nice gifts. You may want to select a piece of garden statuary, a garden bench, a hammock or yard furniture to help them relax and enjoy their garden and the great outdoors.

We are fortunate to have a very good Oklahoma Horticulture Society with quarterly newsletters, monthly lectures and they sponsor excellent garden tours and field trips. You might consider gifting a membership in the Hort Society or a special interest group like the Rose Society, Orchid Society, Daylily Society, Begonia or Iris groups or a similar gardening group that matches their interests. I know of several couples that have considered adding a water garden, new landscaping, a butterfly garden or vegetable garden. This might be the year to give a gift certificate to fulfill that dream or even a personal coupon and budget to build it yourself for your loved one.

If you get a living Christmas tree grown in a container or balled and burlapped you will want to move it outside fairly soon after Christmas and get it planted in the yard before it gets too dry and dehydrated which reduces its chance to get established and grow in your yard. You can enjoy your poinsettias for several more weeks or even moths if you will water and care for them. Keep them in good light and water thoroughly when the soil gets dry to the touch.

We enjoy the opportunity to visit with you throughout the year and appreciate your many questions, comments and feedback. Thanks for your time and attention this year as we learn together to feed our stomachs and our souls with plants. We hope you have a wonderful holiday season with family and friends and we wish you a very Merry Christmas!

Breeding has produced longer lasting and ever more colorful bracts. The bright red, pink, white and multicolored bracts are modified leaves that have changed colors and draw our attention while the true flower at the center of these impressive bracts is really not very exciting. Today’s poinsettia plants and bracts will stay colorful for many weeks or even months when cared for properly.

Select poinsettias with dark green foliage in many varieties and colors from 3” pixie plants to 14” tubs and hanging baskets. The plants will hold up longer if the foliage is on the plant all the way down to the soil line. Choose plants with bracts that are completely colored without a lot of green or brown edges on the bracts. Choose a plant that looks full, balanced and attractive from all sides and is not drooping or wilting.

Poinsettias need a lot of air movement so be careful buying plants displayed or crowded together or displayed in plastic or paper sleeves pulled up around the plants. If you are transporting the plant outdoors in cool or cold temperatures below 50° that is the time to sleeve or box the plant to help extend its life.

When you get your poinsettias home they will do best with good indirect natural light for at least 6 hours daily. They will do great by windows but make sure the bracts and foliage are not actually touching cold windows. Do not place them in a drafty spot by open doors, windows, heaters or air registers. They do best with day temperatures of 60° to 70° and night temperatures of 55°. Extended high temperatures will shorten the life of the bracts so you might move them to a cooler room at night.

Watering is the most important part of caring for poinsettias. Check the soil daily and water when the soil feels dry. If you have the plant wrapped in foil or a plastic pot cover you should punch holes in the bottom to allow the water to drain into a saucer where you can dispose of extra water instead of allowing the plant to stand in water.  I hope you get to enjoy poinsettias as part of your Christmas celebrations.

I understand when we are nestled in urban neighborhoods with nearby neighbors there are safety and appearance issues where you may want or even need to rake up and collect your fallen leaves. Instead of throwing them away consider buying a compost bin, making your own or simply just creating a compost pile. You can contain it with wire or wood fencing, concrete blocks or just start a pile in a corner of the yard.

Composting natural vegetation involves the microbial decomposition of organic matter and produces a great soil amending compost of dark, partially decomposed material ready to add organic matter to your soils after 4 to 9 months in the pile. As microorganisms decompose the leafs and organic matter, temperatures can reach 150° F at the center of the pile. These high temperatures inside the pile kill most weed seeds and disease organisms. Locate the compost pile where there is good drainage and no standing water. To reach the right temperatures the compost pile should be at least 4’ in diameter and 3’ tall when you start. Moisten the leaves periodically after you put them in the pile so they won’t blow away and to speed up the composting. To insure good availability of oxygen in the pile do not make your compost pile over about 5’ high and 10’ in diameter.

You can also add fresh vegetable trimmings and some grass clippings. Too much grass can cause an anaerobic reaction that can get smelly as grass clippings can draw all the oxygen from the pile. The microorganisms cannot function without water so make sure not to let your stack get totally dry. You can speed up the process by adding ½ cup of 10-20-10 type fertilizer for every 20 gallons of organic matter but this extra nitrogen is generally not necessary. Some folks like throwing a thin layer of garden soil on the pile to weight down the leaves and to add more of the natural microorganisms to help compost the pile. It is best not to compost diseased plants or weeds in flower or seed. During warm weather turn the pile about once a month or anytime the pile smells like ammonia or gives off other offensive odors.  

Try a compost pile or barrel to recapture these leaf nutrients and this wonderful organic matter instead of sending it to the dump this fall.

Have a happy Thanksgiving!

I am writing this column in Israel while on an Ag Trade Mission to visit greenhouse and vegetable production operations and to learn more about their crop production in the desert with really limited water resources. We have been fortunate to visit many biblical history sites and it has gotten me thinking about the plants of the bible. More than 120 species of plants are mentioned in the bible. Most of these species still grow in their wild state in the Holy Land and many are used in our Oklahoma gardens. Plants are first mentioned in the first chapter of the first book of the bible in Genesis 1:11, “And God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetations, plants yielding seed and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind”.

We visited the Mount of Olives and the beautiful gardens of Gethsemene highlighted by gnarly old olive trees that were up to 4,000 years old. So they were very old even when Christ visited there 2009 years ago. At the Garden Tomb we saw wild roses, lilies, anemone, rose of sharon, mint, dill, coriander, mustard, provender (chick peas), leeks, onion and garlic that were mentioned in various bible verses and grow in Oklahoma.

At the Oasis where David visited at En-Gedi, we saw palms, tamarisk, oaks, cedar and fir trees, willows, poplar and sycamore trees, all mentioned in the bible.

We observed many edible fruits and berries mentioned in the bible including citron (goodly tree), mulberries, apples, walnuts, almonds, pistachio nuts and grapes. Other edible foods of the bible include figs, dates (palm trees), pomegranate, gourds and watermelons.

We saw many perseverant and determined Acacia trees as we drove across the deserts of southern Judea where Moses and the Israelites wandered for 40 years. Grain and bean crops are mentioned often in the bible including wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt. Cotton, reeds, cattails and papyrus were used in everyday life for making clothes shoes, paper, flutes, boats and homes as described in the bible.

A visit to the desert in the south of Israel helps you to appreciate how exciting it must have been for Christ and his disciples to come up out of the harsh, dry desert and arrive into the much greener “Promised Land” of Jerusalem.

One of the best shows on earth is the changing fall colors on our deciduous trees and shrubs every autumn. Our trees have been cloaked in different tones of green leaves all summer. These leaves are literally millions of cells using natural sunlight to convert water and carbon dioxide into sugars in an amazing process called photosynthesis.

Every leaf contains three natural substances which are the pigments that determine leaf color. Chlorophyll   provides the green color, carotenoids provide yellow, orange and brown tones and anthocyanins provide the red tones. Chlorophyll and carotenoids are in all leaf cells, all the time, during the growing season but the chlorophyll covers up or overpowers the carotenoids so that we see green leaves during the growing season. Most anthocyanins are produced only in the fall and then only in certain conditions and not in all trees.

Chlorophyll is the most important as it enables the plant to use sunlight to produce food. Carotenoids produce the bright yellows and oranges we see in many fruits and vegetables like corn, carrots and bananas. Anthocyanins add the red we see in apples, cherries, strawberries and cranberries.

As the days get shorter, the sunlight is less intense and the temperatures cool, trees and other plants produce less and less chlorophyll. They reach a point when chlorophyll production stops and then the green of chlorophyll disappears to unmask the yellows and oranges of the carotenoids that have been in the leaves all the time. In effect, fall color is the absence of chlorophyll that had provided the green pigment throughout the growing season.

Temperature, moisture and cloud cover all have a big effect on how much red color we get from year to year even on the species of trees most likely to redden up. Warm sunny autumn days with cool but not freezing nights, day after day, produce the best years for red colors. In the daytime the leaves still produce sugars as the chlorophyll decreases but cool nights keep the sap from flowing back to the trunk and roots. When these sugars are trapped in the leaves, anthocyanins are produced to recover valuable nitrogen, sulphur and phosphorus from the leaves before they abscess or drop. Saving these last nutrients helps prepare the tree for winter and will give it more energy next spring. This anthocyanin rescue effort, in the right conditions, adds the exciting red, purple and crimson tones to our trees’ fall colors.

Plant more trees to enjoy these fall colors in your yard.